Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III. Walter Scott
his revenge against Talleyrand, by stigmatizing him, from St. Helena, with a crime the most odious to his new sovereigns of the House of Bourbon. Lastly, the existence of the letter above mentioned has never been proved, and it is inconsistent with every thought and sentiment of the Duke d'Enghien. It is besides said to have been dated from Strasburg; and the duke's aide-de-camp, the Baron de St. Jacques, has given his testimony that he was never an instant separated from his patron, during his confinement in that citadel; and that the duke neither wrote a letter to Buonaparte nor to any one else. But, after all, if Buonaparte had actually proceeded in this bloody matter upon the instigation of Talleyrand, it cannot be denied, that, as a man knowing right from wrong, he could not hope to transfer to his counsellor the guilt of the measures which he executed at his recommendation. The murder, like the rebellion of Absalom, was not less a crime, even supposing it recommended and facilitated by the unconscientious counsels of a modern Achitophel.
Accordingly, Napoleon has not chosen to trust to this defence; but, inconsistently with this pretence of being hurried into the measure by Talleyrand, he has, upon other occasions, broadly and boldly avowed that it was in itself just and necessary; that the Duke d'Enghien was condemned by the laws, and suffered execution accordingly under their sanction.
It is an easy task to show, that even according to the law of France, jealous and severe as it was in its application to such subjects, there existed no right to take the life of the duke. It is true he was an emigrant, and the law denounced the penalty of death against such of these as should return to France with arms in their hands. But the duke did not so return – nay, his returning at all was not an act of his own, but the consequence of violence exercised on his person. He was in a more favourable case than even those emigrants whom storms had cast on their native shore, and whom Buonaparte himself considered as objects of pity, not of punishment. He had indeed borne arms against France; but as a member of the House of Bourbon, he was not, and could not be accounted, a subject of Buonaparte, having left the country before his name was heard of; nor could he be considered as in contumacy against the state of France, for he, like the rest of the royal family, was specially excluded from the benefits of the amnesty which invited the return of the less distinguished emigrants. The act by which he was trepanned, and brought within the compass of French power, not of French law, was as much a violation of the rights of nations, as the precipitation with which the pretended trial followed the arrest, and the execution the trial, was an outrage upon humanity. On the trial no witnesses were produced, nor did any investigation take place, saving by the interrogation of the prisoner. Whatever points of accusation, therefore, are not established by the admission of the duke himself, must be considered as totally unproved. Yet this unconscientious tribunal not only found their prisoner guilty of having borne arms against the Republic, which he readily admitted, but of having placed himself at the head of a party of French emigrants in the pay of England, and carried on machinations for surprising the city of Strasburg; charges which he himself positively denied, and which were supported by no proof whatever.
Buonaparte, well aware of the total irregularity of the proceedings in this extraordinary case, seems, on some occasions, to have wisely renounced any attempt to defend what he must have been convinced was indefensible, and has vindicated his conduct upon general grounds, of a nature well worthy of notice. It seems that, when he spoke of the death of the Duke d'Enghien among his attendants, he always chose to represent it as a case falling under the ordinary forms of law, in which all regularity was observed, and where, though he might be accused of severity, he could not be charged with violation of justice. This was safe language to hearers from whom he was sure to receive neither objection nor contradiction, and is just an instance of an attempt, on the part of a conscientiously guilty party, to establish, by repeated asseverations, an innocence which was inconsistent with fact. But with strangers, from whom replies and argument might be expected, Napoleon took broader grounds. He alleged the death of the Duke d'Enghien to be an act of self-defence, a measure of state policy, arising out of the natural rights of humanity, by which a man, to save his own life, is entitled to take away that of another. "I was assailed," he said, "on all hands by the enemies whom the Bourbons raised up against me; threatened with air-guns, infernal machines, and deadly stratagems of every kind. I had no tribunal on earth to which I could appeal for protection, therefore I had a right to protect myself; and by putting to death one of those whose followers threatened my life, I was entitled to strike a salutary terror into the others."58
We have no doubt that, in this argument, which is in the original much extended, Buonaparte explained his real motives; at least we can only add to them the stimulus of obstinate resentment, and implacable revenge. But the whole resolves itself into an allegation of that state necessity, which has been justly called the Tyrant's plea, and which has always been at hand to defend, or rather to palliate, the worst crimes of sovereigns. The prince may be lamented, who is exposed, from civil disaffection, to the dagger of the assassin, but his danger gives him no right to turn such a weapon even against the individual person by whom it is pointed at him. Far less could the attempt of any violent partisans of the House of Bourbon authorise the first consul to take, by a suborned judgment, and the most precipitate procedure, the life of a young prince, against whom the accession to the conspiracies of which Napoleon complained had never been alleged, far less proved. In every point of view, the act was a murder; and the stain of the Duke d'Enghien's blood must remain indelibly upon Napoleon Buonaparte.
With similar sophistry, he attempted to daub over the violation of the neutral territory of Baden, which was committed for the purpose of enabling his emissaries to seize the person of his unhappy victim. This, according to Buonaparte, was a wrong which was foreign to the case of the Duke d'Enghien, and concerned the sovereign of Baden alone. As that prince never complained of this violation, "the plea," he contended, "could not be used by any other person."59 This was merely speaking as one who has power to do wrong. To whom was the Duke of Baden to complain, or what reparation could he expect by doing so? He was in the condition of a poor man, who suffers injustice at the hands of a wealthy neighbour, because he has no means to go to law, but whose acquiescence under the injury cannot certainly change its character, or render that invasion just which is in its own character distinctly otherwise. The passage may be marked as showing Napoleon's unhappy predilection to consider public measures not according to the immutable rules of right and wrong, but according to the opportunities which the weakness of one kingdom may afford to the superior strength of another.60
It may be truly added, that even the pliant argument of state necessity was far from justifying this fatal deed. To have retained the Duke d'Enghien a prisoner, as a hostage who might be made responsible for the Royalists' abstaining from their plots, might have had in it some touch of policy; but the murder of the young and gallant prince, in a way so secret and so savage, had a deep moral effect upon the European world, and excited hatred against Buonaparte wherever the tale was told. In the well-known words of Fouché, the duke's execution was worse than a moral crime – it was a political blunder.61 It had this consequence, most unfortunate for Buonaparte, that it seemed to stamp his character as bloody and unforgiving; and in so far prepared the public mind to receive the worst impressions, and authorised the worst suspicions, when other tragedies of a more mysterious character followed that of the last of the race of Condé.62
DEATH OF PICHEGRU.
The Duke d'Enghien's execution took place on the 21st March; on the 7th April following, General Pichegru was found dead in his prison. A black handkerchief was wrapped round his neck, which had been tightened by twisting round a short stick inserted through one of the folds. It was asserted that he had turned this stick with his own hands, until he lost the power of respiring, and then, by laying his head on the pillow, had secured the stick in its position. It did not escape the public, that this was a mode of terminating life far more likely to be inflicted by the hands of others than those of the deceased himself. Surgeons were found, but men, it is said, of small reputation, to sign a report upon the state of the body, in which they affirm that Pichegru had died by suicide; yet as he must have lost animation and sense so soon as he had twisted the stick to the point of strangulation, it seems strange he should not have then unclosed his
See Las Cases, tom. iv., p. 269.
See Las Cases, tom. iv., p. 271.
See, in the Appendix to this volume, No. II., "Further Particulars concerning the Arrest, Trial, and Death of the Duke d'Enghien."
"I was not the person who hesitated to express himself with the least restraint, respecting this violence against the rights of nations and humanity. 'It is more than a crime,' I said, 'it is a political blunder;' words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others." – Fouché, tom. i., p. 266.
"I deplore as much as any man can possibly do, the catastrophe of the Duke d'Enghien; but as Napoleon has himself spoken of it, it does not become me to add another word. I shall only observe, that this affair is far from having been cleared up – that it was impossible that my brother should have brought the prince to Paris to be immolated – that he who established a Bourbon in Tuscany, had quite a contrary design, and one which could but be favourable; else why cause so distinguished a prince to make a journey to Paris, when his presence in traversing France could but be dangerous? If it be asked, why the commendable design attributed to Napoleon was not followed up, and was so cruelly changed, I cannot explain: but I am persuaded that impartial history will one day reveal this secret." – Louis Buonaparte, p. 40.